Cattle herder Mohamed Ould Bouthiah has seen the future, and he likes what he sees. “Five of my cows are crossbreeds with a European variety, and those five together produce 80 litres of milk a day.”

Bouthiah, 50, says that with a herd of 150 of the local breed of cows, he could only produce 320 litres of milk per day on his farm in Rosso, in the south of Mauritania, but he could produce the same with just 20 of the hybrid cattle.

“Genetic improvement is the best way to promote cattle rearing, because I can turn a profit with a smaller herd that goes through less fodder,” Bouthiah, a cattle herder in Rosso, south of Mauritania, told IPS.

Mauritanians are big consumers of milk, drinking an average of nearly a litre of milk per person per day, compared to just 0.08 litres per person across sub-Saharan Africa, said Mohamed Lemine Ould Hakky, head of the division responsible for improving animal production at the Ministry for Rural Development. 

According to the ministry, Mauritania imports 70 percent of its dairy needs.

Yet a 2004 study done by the World Bank suggested that if the livestock sector received greater attention, it could meet 70 percent of the country’s dairy needs.

Hakky told IPS that local cattle breeds lacked some important characteristics.

“To overcome these shortcomings, between 2006 and 2009, the rural development ministry put a programme in place to improve the genetic stock and promote animal health. The campaign targeted 1,000 dairy cows in the regions of Trarza, Brakna and Gorgol (in the southwest and southeast of the country),” he said.

Hakky is also responsible for a pilot farm at Idini, 50 kilometres east of the capital, Nouakchott, set up in 2011 to promote meat and diary production. Some 300 cows were inseminated.

While Mauritania’s traditional cattle breeds don’t produce more than three litres of milk per day, the hybrid cattle can produce over 16 litres per day, according to Dr Mohamed Ould Hacen, a vet with the rural development ministry’s livestock office.

When it comes to meat production, Hacen also said that the birthweight for the hybrid calves averages 28 kilos, compared to 16 kg for local breeds.

Zeindine Diallo, who rears cattle at Gorgol, wants better care for the inseminated cows in order to allow the country’s herders to move away from the existing breeds and increase production.

“After three years, the artificial insemination operations, carried out with the technical support of the Inter-State School for Veterinary Science and Medicine based in Dakar (Senegal) are having an effect, as the hybrid heifers themselves begin to calve. Of the 1,000 cows that have been inseminated, we’ve achieved a 40 percent success rate,” Hacen said.

According to Hakky, total consumption of milk in Mauritania is some 52,000 tonnes per year, more than three times greater than domestic production of 12,000 tonnes.

Official trade statistics show that the annual cost of dairy imports into Mauritania is 50 million dollars, according to El Hacen Ould Taleb, a herder and president of the National Grouping of Associations of Pastoral Cooperatives (GNAP).

In November, the minister for rural development, Brahim Ould M’Bareck, announced the creation of two more farms for artificial insemination, at Kankossa Lake in the south of the country, and at the Mahmouda Depression in the southeast.

Fodder will also be grown in these two areas, with help from Chinese experts, the minister added.

GNAP is calling for more extensive scientific research into the sustainability and profitability of the experiment. Taleb told IPS he doesn’t think Mauritania is currently able to produce enough cattle feed for intensive livestock rearing.

The four domestic milk production companies, all based in the capital, can only absorb five percent of the country’s dairy output, Hakky said. The rest, he says, is consumed locally in camps, villages and other cities, and also goes to feed calves, baby camels and smaller livestock.

“We are calling for a facility to be set up to produce long-life milk, and for tanning factories. And for increased production of fodder to allow the country to save the 50 million dollars devoted to imports,” Taleb said. “And – why not, in time – for the export of milk from Mauritania.”

“The palm tree is a means of survival,” said Tahya Mint Mohamed, a 44-year-old Mauritanian farmer and mother of three children. “We eat its dates; we make mats, beds and chairs from palms; the leaves are also used to make baskets and to feed our livestock.”

Mint Mohamed is the regional president of the associations for participatory management of oases in the Two Hodhs region of southwestern Mauritania (hodh means “basin” in Arabic) – an unusual position for a woman to hold in a traditionally male-dominated activity.

She was delighted to take IPS on a tour of her palm plantation, which is alive with activity during the date harvesting period between June and August.

“The plantation is my most precious investment. I maintain it carefully and water it with the help of my shadoof (a traditional irrigation system using a bucket and counterweight to draw water from a well),” she told IPS.

Her output depends heavily on rainfall and successfully fighting off the attentions of locusts, birds and animals, but she estimates her harvest this year will come in somewhere between 500 and 1,000 kilos of dates.

Mauritania has over 10,000 productive hectares of date palms, taking into account mature, productive palms as well as young trees that have not yet begun to bear fruit, and male palms – essential for pollination – according to Mohamed Ould Ahmed Banane, who oversees monitoring and evaluation for the Oases Sustainable Development Programme (PDDO).

Banane said nearly 20,000 people across the country depend on dates for their livelihood in five oasis regions: Adrar in the north, Tagant in the Centre, and Assaba and the two Hodhs in the southeast.

He estimates Mauritania’s annual production of dates at 60,000 tonnes, to which is added a small amount of imports – 1,000 tonnes from Algeria and 500 tonnes from Tunisia. Around 60 percent of dates are eaten between June and August, during the Guetna (the Arabic name for the season when dates are harvested). The rest is dried for consumption throughout the year.

Nutritionist Mohamed Baro said dates are rich in micronutrients like iron and calcium and are an excellent source of energy.

Hademine Ould Saleck, the imam of Nouakchott’s main mosque, said that there is a baraka (a blessing in Arabic) in dates, explaining that it is often the first thing eaten to break the fast during Ramadan, especially in date-producing countries.

But Mauritania’s oases have been badly affected by drought, suffering from siltation, a lack of water and declining soil fertility, said Banane.

“In Adrar, date production was clearly lower this year because of climatic threats, such as poor rainfall, dust and wind, which held back the harvest,” said Sid’Ahmed Ould Hmoymed, the mayor of Atar, the principal town of the Adrar region.

Mohamed Ould Haj, an experienced farmer, provided a gloomy summary of the situation in the region. “This year, we had nothing at all: no dates, no wheat, no barley, no vegetables and no watermelons because of the drought.”

But Cheikh Ould Moustapha, regional coordinator for PDDO in Adrar, told IPS that while it has been a challenging year, Ould Haj’s income from all sources will come to between 2,500 and 3,000 dollars.

Besides the drought, tourist activity in all of the country’s oases zones has been frozen since the 2007 murder of six French tourists in the country by the Islamist group Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

The government established PDDO in 2002 to preserve the fragile but valuable oasis ecosystems and stem a rural exodus that had begun gathering pace. The International Fund for Agricultural Development contributed around 37 million dollars, according to Alioun Demba, head of international cooperation at the Ministry for Rural Development.

“The programme has focused on organising farmers around the oases to support the emergence of a civil society that can sustain oasis participatory management associations (AGPOs) and make collective investments,” Banane told IPS.

The project calls for AGPOs to manage projects financed by PDDO and a contribution from the farmers themselves. Local smallholders elect association officials, set their own priorities, and control any income. Several AGPOs have already received grants from PDDO for amounts ranging from 46,000 to 92,000 dollars.

To demonstrate sustainable land management techniques, PDDO has also created small field schools (measuring just 10 by 10 metres) and a plantation with fruit trees and vegetables interspersed with the date palms.

“This creates three levels of protection against soil erosion and allows good conservation, efficient irrigation, and a diversification of sources of income for the farmers,” said Banane.

In the Adrar region, where nearly half of the country’s palm plantations are found, smallholders have proved reluctant to apply modern techniques, said Cheikh Ould Moustapha, regional coordinator for PDDO.

The recommendations call for well-spaced plantations, pollination, drip or tube irrigation and the use of organic fertiliser. In Adrar, the wealthier farmers use solar-powered pumps to draw water for both these systems of irrigation.

In terms of marketing, PDDO has helped to set up a group in Adrar to work together to make transporting dates to the capital, Nouakchott, more profitable, Moustapha told IPS.

The date palm and the camel – the two pillars of their economy – are well adapted to the climate of the Sahara and the Sahel and remain important assets, Moustapha stressed.

The building is standing empty now, but Fatimetou Mint M’Barkenni is looking forward to when it is again filled with the soft cheeping of day-old chicks. Earlier in the year, she raised a first batch of broiler chickens as part of a pilot project, to boost rural incomes and food security here at Bourate, in rural Mauritania.

“The first brood of chicks I raised was sold in June, and I’m waiting for PROLPRAF to deliver a second batch – there was such strong demand,” said 53-year-old M’Barkenni.

PROLPRAF, the Value Chains Development Programme for Poverty Reduction, is a joint project between the government of Mauritania and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), aimed at strengthening food security while promoting domestic production of seven agricultural commodities –vegetables, dates, milk, skins and hides, red meat, forest products, and poultry.

“The Bourate Broiler Production Unit is a godsend for us, especially during this period of serious drought when there are serious problems with malnutrition,” M’Barkenni told IPS.

“This initiative is vital for women, because the men have gone to find work in the big urban centres, like Nouakchott and Nouadhibou,” she added.

Mariem Mint Sidi is the manager of a second poultry facility at Foum Gleita, in the southeast of the country. She is proud of what she has already learned about feeding and caring for chicks. She is also pleased by the affordable price of the chickens. “One can buy a 2.4 kilo broiler with healthy, nutritious meat for six dollars.”

In June, the two poultry units at Bourate and Foum Gleita each received 1,600 day-old chicks imported from neighbouring Morocco, explained Ahmed Ould Sidina, PROLPRAF’S assistant for animal production. A fast-growing commercial variety of broiler was chosen for the project; a breed called Cobb500 that was developed in the U.S. to thrive on even low-quality feed.

“The chicks adapted perfectly to conditions of extreme heat (40 degrees in the shade) and only 34 of them died out of the 1,600,”  said Ahmed Ould Brahim Khlil, a vet with PROLPRAF.

He told IPS that the chicks were immunised against Gumboro and Newcastle, two common diseases affecting chickens in Mauritania, and managers were trained in techniques for cleaning the chicks and giving them a dose of vitamins.

Each of the units cost around 10,000 dollars to put up, including construction of the arched, galvanised iron buildings, the purchase of chicks and feed, and installation of troughs for water and food, thermal insulation, and solar-powered lighting and freezers.

Mint Sidi and M’Barkenni are unpaid volunteers for the project, which is still in its pilot phase.

The income from the pilot phase has allowed the project to build up operating capital of around 3,500 dollars which will be used for the purchase of new chicks and feed. The next order of 2,000 chicks is expected in mid-August, said Brahim Khlil.

“Poultry farming in zones of extreme poverty aims to guarantee sustained local production and stimulate revenue-creating activities and create jobs,” explained Mohamed Ould Abdallahi, coordinator of PROLPRAF.

Abdallahi says that with 4.17 million dollars in support from IFAD, PROLPRAF aims to reduce the loss of precious hard currency by gradually replacing imports with domestic products. The programme’s overarching goal is to strengthen living conditions and incomes for women and young people in particular.

According to the rural development ministry, Mauritanians eat an estimated 11,000 tonnes of chicken per year, an average of three to four kilogrammes per person.

Mauritania’s demand for poultry is partly covered by local production, but most chicken is imported, in the form of 5,000 tonnes of frozen chicken and around 40,000 day-old chicks imported into the country each year. Similarly, only a third of Mauritania’s annual consumption of about five million eggs is produced locally.

The cost of importing eggs, frozen chicken, chicks and feed, equipment and other materials is estimated at 18 million dollars per year, according to Moktar Fall, an advisor on livestock for the rural development ministry.

Abdallahi Ould Nabgha, president of Mauritania’s national association of poultry producers, said there are 60 farms clustered around the cities of Nouakchott in the southwest, Nouadhibou in the west, and Rosso and Sélibaby in the south.

“The poultry industry employs 10,000 people, not counting the profitable by-products the sector makes available to others, such as manure used as organic fertiliser or feathers used to make dusters to clean computers,” said Nabgha.

He was critical of the country’s lack of infrastructure, which forces the importation of chicks, feed and equipment for poultry operations.

To address this lack, the government signed an agreement with a local businessman on Jul. 22 for the construction of a poultry complex in Nouakchott, the capital, at a cost of 34 million dollars.

To be completed in the next 18 months, this complex will be a production unit for day-old chicks and broilers with a capacity of 20,000 tonnes per year, as well as producing 15 million eggs and 120,000 tonnes of poultry feed per year, Yahya Ould Abdeldayem, director of investment at the finance ministry, told IPS.

The sun is beating down on Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital, and Habi Amadou Tidjane Diop is a tired and frustrated woman. Seated on an empty upturned bucket, the mother of nine is waiting in a long queue to buy food.

“I got here early because it’s Thursday and I need to buy groceries for both today and Friday – four kilogrammes of rice, two kilos of sugar, four kg of pasta and two litres of oil,” Diop told IPS.

The shop, in the Medina 3 neighbourhood of the capital, is one of 400 set up across the city to sell staple foods to the city’s poorest residents at subsidised prices. The manager, Sidi Ould Aly, explained that it’s part of the government’s nationwide “Programme Emel 2012”, intended to reduce the impact of a drought which has driven food prices beyond the buying power of many people in this arid West African country.

Figures released in 2010 by Mauritania’s National Statistics Office put the country’s poverty rate at 42 percent. This already vulnerable nation is now experiencing severe food insecurity, according to a report published by the World Food Programme (WFP) in December 2011. The WFP estimated that by the end of last year, 800,000 Mauritanians were in the grip of a food crisis linked to drought.

A study released in February by international charity Save the Children and several partners found that more than a million people would be affected by the crisis between June and September.

Mohamad Baro, a nutritionist with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Nouakchott, told IPS that one in eight Mauritanian children between six and 24 months is suffering from malnutrition.

In response to the crisis, the government has introduced the Emel programme, with half of the programme’s 137-million-dollar cost coming from the national budget, and the balance from international partners. The programme, which was launched at the end of January, provides staple foods at subsidised prices for the poorest, as well as fodder for livestock, and vouchers that pastoralists can use to access water and veterinary assistance for their animals.

Assessing the programme in June, Prime Minister Moulaye Ould Mohamed Laghdaf told parliament, “Over the past four months, the programme’s 1,235 stores have distributed 150,000 tonnes of assistance, including 50,000 tonnes of food and 100,000 tonnes of animal feed.”

Popular dissatisfaction

But Diop and the others waiting in the intense heat at the Medina 3 store say they are disappointed not only by the long lines, but by the meagre daily ration sold to each household.

“I got home with two kilos of rice, one kilo of sugar and a litre of oil, which is not enough,” the mother of nine told IPS.

Mamadou Samba Sy and his two wives have an even larger number of people to take care of. While Sy is satisfied with the quality of the food from the Emel 2012 stores, as well as the prices, which are lower than in the open market, he too complains about the amounts available.

“Someone like me, responsible for two households with a dozen children, can spend the whole day queuing and return with one or two kilos of food,” he said.

Meanwhile, outside the capital, livestock herders desperate for food for their animals in the parched countryside are also critical of the programme.

Hacen Ould Taleb, president of an umbrella group representing agro-sylvo-pastoralists, complained about the quality of fodder provided, saying it’s not suitable for small ruminants like sheep or goats. He told IPS that herders with a small number of animals have gained nothing from the Emel programme. “Only the big operators and wheat traders wheat have benefited from the operation.”

Khalil Ould Khairi, president of the Mauritanian Association for Consumer Rights, said some of the animal feed being supplied is causing more harm than good.”There’s one foul-smelling feed variety which upsets the digestion of both camels and cows, quickly leading to the animals dying.”

Parliamentary scrutiny

In June, the lower house of parliament summoned Prime Minister Laghdaf to appear before it so legislators could question him over the management of the programme.

Members of parliament from both the ruling party and the opposition vehemently criticised the aid programme’s management, finding fault with both the quality of food and the locations chosen for the stores.

Ruling party MP Houssein Ahmed Hady told Laghdaf that citizens are unanimous in saying that Emel has not measured up to their expectations. He described the management of the emergency scheme as chaotic.

“The programme started seven months late,” opposition MP Moustapha Ould Bedredine told IPS, “the quantities distributed are insignificant and its management has been plagued by irregularities at all levels.”

Bedredine accused the government of using the programme to buy people’s political support, even as the country’s pastoralists are under serious threat.

Ahmed Ould Daddah, from the Democratic Forces Party, warned the government that the country’s livestock herders face catastrophe. “An urgent and effective solution must be found… to avoid the worst.” he cautioned.

A multi-pronged strategy to end female genital mutilation in Mauritania is making gradual progress, though campaigners acknowledge much remains to be done in a country where more than two-thirds of girls suffer excision.

A 2007 Demographic Health Survey found that 71 percent of women and girls in Mauritania have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM), carried out by traditional birth attendants on girls before they reach the age of five.

The survey reported the reasons given in support of the practice were religion, aesthetics and the promotion of modesty. It also found that the practice was less common among better educated families.

Khatto Mint Jiddou, who heads the campaign against gender-based violence at Mauritania’s Ministry for Social Affairs, Childhood and the Family, told IPS that the initiative involves a wide range of people, including civil society activists, doctors and religious leaders.

The national programme, supported by several development partners, includes lobbying for the adoption of a law criminalising excision, raising awareness of a fatwa (a religious notice) forbidding excision, and the setting up of regional offices to monitor the practice.

In March, 35 excisors – including many from the central Tagant region, where an estimated 97 percent of girls suffer excision – publicly announced that they were voluntarily abandoning the procedure. Jiddou said the women had been convinced of the dangers of the practice by the explanations put forward by doctors and theologians.

Djeinaba Ba, a gynaecologist in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, told IPS that FGM causes pain and trauma, and often results in serious infections. Massive haemorrhaging, which can lead to death, also occurs frequently.

Aziza Mint Meslem, a midwife and civil society activist working against FGM, said that girls who survive the harmful procedure only have more difficulties ahead.

“Some infections create dysfunction in the external mucus membranes of the uterus, which prevents the passage of sperm to the uterus, thereby creating sterility,” she said. She added that the practice also provokes obstetric fistulas and haemorrhaging during childbirth.

Religious leaders have also lent their voices to the campaign.

Hademine Ould Saleck, the imam of the old mosque in Nouakchott, said that he and his colleagues issued a religious notice, or fatwa, forbidding FGM in 2010, based on the risks identified by doctors and taking into account the emphasis Islam places on the dignity of human beings.

“We consider this practice, in its usual form, to be forbidden because of the damage it causes, and call on civil and criminal authorities to act against perpetrators,” he told IPS.

Saleck said that the fatwa issued by the Mauritanian religious community in 2011 received support from colleagues in eight West African countries: Burkina Faso, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Chad.

There are additional incentives for birth attendants to renounce FGM: although those who give up the practice do not receive any compensation, they will be prioritised in the allocation of loans for income- generating activities and given preferential access to literacy classes.

But Meslem, who works with an NGO called the Mauritanian Association for the Health and Development of Women, says her experience in the field underlines the need for the adoption of laws specifically targeting FGM.

She told IPS that twice in the past two years, she has come across cases of young girls who have died due to haemorrhaging after FGM. In each case, it was her NGO rather than the girls’ parents who alerted police; both times, the woman responsible was arrested, held for questioning for several days, but then released with no further action taken.

The midwife lamented the lack of legal sanctions against excisors in the Mauritanian penal code. “It’s a flagrant violation of the rights of girls, because international human rights law stipulates that every person has the right to the integrity of her body,” said Meslem.

Gynaecologist Ba told IPS she has seen shifting attitudes recognising the harmful effects of FGM, early marriage and closely-spaced pregnancies. She observed, however, that the shift is noticeable among better-educated women living in cities and towns, and not among those who practice a nomadic lifestyle.

Meslem too sees reasons for guarded optimism. “We are seeing a positive trend, even if this phenomenon, rooted in socio-cultural considerations, is far from being brought under control.”